Location: Singapore

How is it our last day in Singapore already?! We are so madly in love with this city, but there’s only a few things left on the to-do list and today’s the day! We started off on a free walking tour through Little India, with an extremely enthusiastic local guide. The guide not only explained some of the history of the neighbourhood and many of its colourful murals, but a lot about how the government of Singapore is involved in the lives of its citizens as well.

We stopped into the Hindu temple Sri Veeramakaliamman, and as it turns out Max and I had dozens of questions about Hindu religion afterwards. There were guys with baggy pants, no shirts and tons of shiny necklaces feeding bits of rice to people lined up, and bringing food offerings from them to different gods in the back section of the temple. Prayers were being chanted over a loud speaker as neon string lights blinked away around sculptures of gods. Some worshippers sat praying in the middle of the floor in the most random spots, while others sat just chatting with friends. There weren’t that many people but it felt busy, just from the variety of stuff going on.

There was so much surprising information about Singapore on the tour that I swear we were slack jawed for most of it. Here’ just few of the interesting facts we learned:

1. Most people live in social housing, but it’s not like the situation in North America. It’s pretty legit and nice.
2. You legally cannot buy a house or an apartment if you are younger than 35, unless you get married.
3. All the murals in Little India are one year leases on the wall they are painted on- so unless the building owner decides against it, the art will be whitewashed and redone every single year.
4. It is illegal to drink alcohol publicly in little India pretty much all of the time, but not the rest of the city.
5. Locals have to pay $150 just to get inside a casino, foreigners get in for free (this was a way to lower gambling addictions in the city and apparently it’s worked super well).
6. Cracking a coconut in front of your god at a Hindu temple symbolizes you breaking your ego, and asking for a fresh start.
7. Almost every money lender in the city is a descendent from the same Indian family of money lenders.

Sometimes these tours can be hit or miss, but I was really happy this was a hit since it’s Max’s first ever walking tour. Crazy!

We stopped into the Tekka Hawker Centre for some well deserved Indian food for lunch, and promptly became super sleepy. The sun was high, our bellies were full of comfort carbs, and we were feeling the effects of walking around pretty constantly for the last two days. We returned home for a quick siesta, and then bounded out for our last bit of sightseeing around town, walking once more down Haji street, and over to the famous Raffles Hotel (seriously this hotel is the perfect colonial building down to every last little white detail- just seeing it from the outside makes you feel like you’re on a movie set).

All day we had been giddy about some tickets we booked for tonight for… drumroll please…

A NIGHT SAFARI.

YEP.

I felt all vibrate-y as we approached the zoo. I LOVE ZOOS. We spent hours exploring in the dark, which turns out is exciting and super creepy at the same time. Have you heard a tiger roar in the dark from somewhere nearby? We rode in a little open air safari tram and went past a few animal exhibits where there was no fence. We can truthfully say that all that was between us and a pride of lions today was a small steep moat. No glass or fences of any kind! We got so close to some tapirs I’m pretty sure I could have touched one! At one point Max walked through an open bat exhibit where bats just fly freely all around you. I have done this in the past and screamed involuntarily as bats flew close enough to ruffle my hair so I opted to meet him at the other side about two minutes later. (He definitely came out looking pretty rattled!) It was so fun to see all the animals in a new light (literally), and we left the zoo with the biggest goofiest grins.

After three amazing days in a row I’ve got to say I absolutely can’t wait to come back to Singapore again one day for a longer stay!

Sav